Small Business Saturday is one of the highest-impact days of the year for destination marketers. According to American Express, for every dollar spent at a small business in the U.S., 68 cents stays in the local community. For DMOs and destination marketers, this day represents a concentrated opportunity to highlight the independent retailers, restaurants, and artisans that make a destination worth visiting in the first place.
The best Small Business Saturday campaigns tap into retailtainment, turning shopping into a participatory, social experience that draws people out and keeps them moving through the district. Here are ten ideas for making the most of the day.
When Is Small Business Saturday?
Small Business Saturday falls on the Saturday after Thanksgiving each year. Launched in 2010 by American Express, it has grown into a nationwide movement encouraging shoppers to support local retailers, restaurants, and artisans during the holiday season. In 2025, the day drove an estimated $18 billion in consumer-reported spending at small businesses, according to the American Express Small Business Saturday Consumer Insights Survey conducted with NFIB.
10 Ideas to Maximize Small Business Saturday
1. Run a Check-In Challenge Across Participating Businesses
A digital passport check-in challenge incentivizes customers to explore participating businesses throughout the day. Each check-in earns a digital stamp; complete enough stamps to unlock a reward, whether that’s an exclusive discount, a free product, or entry into a grand prize drawing. Promote the challenge across business windows, social media, and the DMO’s email list before the event. The Rancho Cordova Summer of Shenanigans used exactly this format across dozens of local businesses, building a first-party participant database in the process.
2. Partner with Local Artisans for Pop-Up Events
Host pop-ups featuring local artisans in unused urban spaces, vacant storefronts, or alongside existing businesses. The goal is to create density, concentrated activity in a defined area that gives visitors a reason to keep walking and exploring rather than heading home after one or two stops.
3. Build a Digital Shopping and Dining Guide
Create a curated mobile-friendly guide to participating businesses: descriptions, hours, special offers, and locations in a single shareable resource. Update it in the weeks before the event and distribute through the DMO’s channels, local business social accounts, and community newsletters. A guide that lives online year-round builds search equity for local shopping queries well beyond the November window.
Visit Big Sky’s GO Big Sky Community Coupons Pass built exactly this kind of resource for the fall shoulder season: a mobile-friendly directory of local businesses, each listed with their logo, photo, and specific deal, distributed through a 2,000-subscriber email list and promoted by every participating business to their own customers.
4. Engage Local Influencers
Partner with micro-influencers who are genuinely embedded in the local community. Organize curated tours with behind-the-scenes access, product tastings, and meet-and-greets with business owners. Authentic content from a trusted local voice drives foot traffic in ways that polished brand creative rarely matches.
5. Highlight Unique Local Products and Souvenirs
Curate standout local items on the DMO’s website and social channels in the weeks before Small Business Saturday. Partner with artisans for limited-edition products exclusive to the destination. Every purchase that couldn’t be made anywhere else turns a visitor into an advocate for the place.
6. Run a Scavenger Hunt Through the Business District
Design a structured scavenger hunt that sends participants to specific businesses to find clues, photograph items, or complete challenges. Each stop is a participating small business. The mechanic drives multi-stop exploration and gives each business multiple visitor interactions across the day, rather than a single pass-through.
7. Develop Limited-Time Offers and Cross-Promotional Discounts
Early bird specials, free gifts with purchase, and holiday-themed bundles create urgency. Cross-promotional discounts, showing proof of purchase from another local store to unlock a deal, are particularly effective because they drive traffic between businesses rather than concentrating it at one or two destinations.
8. Feature Local Business Owner Stories
Share stories from business owners in the weeks leading up to Small Business Saturday across the DMO’s website, social media, and email newsletter. Video testimonials from owners about why they opened in this destination, what they make, and who their customers are build the emotional context that turns a shopping errand into a community experience worth participating in.
9. Create a Destination Hashtag and Make It Visible
Create a single memorable hashtag for the day and display it prominently at participating businesses, on signage, and in all DMO communications. Every visitor photo posted with the hashtag extends the campaign’s reach organically. Keep the format simple: #ShopLocal[City], #[City]SmallBiz, or #Discover[City] all work well.
10. Use the Platform Year-Round
The digital passport playbook that drives Small Business Saturday engagement doesn’t need to sit idle until November. The same structure powers a Restaurant Week pass, a spring shop-local trail, or a summer food-and-beverage crawl. Seeker XP handles all of it on one platform, building a first-party community database that compounds with every campaign.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Small Business Saturday?
Small Business Saturday is a shopping holiday held on the Saturday after Thanksgiving each year in the United States. It was created by American Express in 2010 to encourage consumers to shop at independent local businesses during the holiday season. It falls between Black Friday and Cyber Monday and focuses specifically on small, locally owned retailers, restaurants, and service businesses rather than national chains.
How do destination marketers promote Small Business Saturday?
DMOs and destination marketers promote Small Business Saturday by organizing district-wide campaigns that give visitors a structured reason to explore multiple businesses: check-in challenges, scavenger hunts, curated guides, social media hashtag campaigns, and pop-up events. The goal is to turn a single-store shopping trip into a multi-stop destination experience that benefits the full business ecosystem.
What makes a Small Business Saturday campaign successful?
The most effective Small Business Saturday campaigns share three characteristics: they give participants a goal (complete the challenge, earn the reward, find all the clues), they make participation social (shared hashtags, leaderboards, photo check-ins), and they involve the full business district rather than a single anchor destination. Campaigns that generate first-party participant data also give the DMO something durable beyond the single-day event.